chibikaie

Take that spam bot!

I have a 20 long, and I think I'll pick up a 10 at some point. They hold water. I don't need a fancy tank.

Oh, that looks really neat. Like, here are some dried leaves, and hey here is a glass one, and then some more natural stuff.
If you want to talk ridiculous expenditures, I have spent unmentionable amounts on various animals that hated my guts and did their best to kill me. (I still get bitten on average five times a week by one of my darlings.) Things like bigger enclosures and a meticulously researched selection of food and supplements. I definitely can never call spending a few extra bucks on one's shrimp frivolous. Do whatever makes you happy - that is the whole point of a hobby!

tacklehug!This forum makes it a lot better.

tacklehug!This forum makes it a lot better.

Poke poke poke poke!
(Yeah. I had too much coffee. It was coffee or alcohol. Bad day at work.)

Wow, very thorough! Looking forward to hearing the results you get!

I thought for a moment that I was hallucinating ...

Well, today I found my first set of surrogate fish for a plateful of flowerhorn eggs. 
 
I have a 9" beast of a female red dragon Flowerhorn paired up with a shortbody red Texas/Flowerhorn male. He is apparently sterile thanks to the red tx in him. So I separated them and she still lays like clockwork every 2 weeks. HOWEVER>>>>
We all know convicts are breeding machines, right? Well, they love to have babies so much, apparently, they will take someone else's and raise them. 
 
I separated my female and she still filled an 8" plate full of eggs even without a male. I took said  plate and placed it in a tank with a very fertile convict pair that gives me about 200 fry per spawn that I have upgraded all sorts of things in aquatic gear with. lol  Anyway, I watched them for a while and then left them to check out the plate. I went out to run some errands and when I came back all the eggs were gone. 
 
However, in the neighboring tank, I saw my Cryptoheros Myrnae totally engrossed in watching the female convict working her heart out in the corner facing them. They could see her placing my missing eggs on a better hidden spot in her favorite pot turned backward in that corner. 4 days later, I hoped for wigglers, but couldn't find them anywhere. During the night, they had completely torn that tank apart and moved plants, pots, sand...everything. I think they realized they had eyes on them from the next tank. They shoved it all against that wall of the tank. And I couldn't find a trace of the eggs.   Only a few spots were left I couldn't see behind. 
 
WELL, don't ever let that fool you. Today I came home for lunch and found about 300 fry free swimming in that tank, and they are very light colored  and see-thru to be pure convicts. And they have one single line running horizontal like flowerhorns. And these are very unruly. lol Not like the convict babies at all. 
 
I think, they have taken the flowerhorn eggs, dad fertilized, and they hatched them. They have not even been in breeding color since I took their last batch about 2 days before I gave them the plate. These are not shaped like con's, nor do they seem like con's. ON the first day of free swimming, mine have always stayed in a pot and mom/dad spit food in there for them. These are all over the place and have run my poor convict pair to death trying to keep them together. They even run to the surface. They refuse BBS. But drop a green flake in there and they go nuts!   Dad is a huge male and very dark and he is like a drill sgt in keeping his kids in line. Not these....lol He is very nicely striped and every batch I have had from this pair has been almost black at hatching and stripe up very early, never clear. 
 
 
So has anyone ever done this or known of anyone that did this? I have heard of males sneaking in and fertilizing eggs in a community tank, but to completely adopt a plate of eggs and hatch/raise them? I think it's awesome!   I bought these convicts at 1/2" and they have been paired up since they hit one inch. They just wondered off from everyone else and that was that. Dad is about 5" with an awesome head and mom is about 4" and glows orange in breeding color. They have been super awesome parents and give me terrific looking offspring. My neice named them Emma/Hook (Once Upon a Time) because she says its true love.   My LFS wants all I can send them from this pair.

I thought about this on the way to the post office, I was like kids are not in the car set volume to 45 as I get to 24 I'm like wait!!!!!! I got 64 little guys back there so I had to wait till I dropped them off and enjoyed my ride home.

The ear spots I was referring to are the clear patches on the sides of the head.  Here's a good example from Google:
 

 
 
But to answer your question Chib, yepper.  They can hear.  Not sure how, but here's a scientific paper abstract for ya.
 
http://news.sciencemag.org/2011/03/crustaceans-crave-little-quiet#

Got the approval from the Mrs.... now just wait till the wedding, and the build will probably start to take shape in june

Oh, that looks really neat. Like, here are some dried leaves, and hey here is a glass one, and then some more natural stuff.
If you want to talk ridiculous expenditures, I have spent unmentionable amounts on various animals that hated my guts and did their best to kill me. (I still get bitten on average five times a week by one of my darlings.) Things like bigger enclosures and a meticulously researched selection of food and supplements. I definitely can never call spending a few extra bucks on one's shrimp frivolous. Do whatever makes you happy - that is the whole point of a hobby!

I just love that the pic looks like they have escaped and are hanging out between 2 tanks, lol

LOL  No, you are looking through the aquarium to others.

Now there's a visual... ha ha ha

yepper.  You can stand there poking the water all day with your finger and it would do basically the same thing. LOL

It gets so high because I use potassium sulfate instead of potassium nitrate - it's the excess sulfate. Also the starting TDS of the tap water is 150. I'm aware that frightens some people!

Too many floaters for top down, here are a couple others

Just have to take the top pipe out, the marina intake tube is the same size as this one

and shrimpspot is the site where i do present them for the first time in our hobby...
 
the mosses are here.. in several cases i do know their location, it just takes time, research, resources (yeah.. they do lack) and much patience and attention...
 
i wish in one month now i come with at least the first fissidens. ( i know where they are aproximately.. it takes 2/3/4 days to get to them, they really are remote and it does imply wild animals (not the small ones ).
 
but hey, i am writing from transylvania (the very town where that novel starts)     so it is really fun, sometimes stressy.
 
and telling you another story.... the mini weeping i have shown.. comes directly from a spring in the Borgo Pass.. the one in that same book...

ya its March 29 - May 2

Duh 9th.,  They are ghost Bees.  Of course they are invisible

Ya they could!!!!!!!   Congratulating myself on the detective work and not being lazy. 

It's a very important half inch.

Many years ago, I built a cabinet for a 10 gallon tank. During one of my moves to and from college, the tank broke, after which I upgraded to bigger tanks. The stand went into storage and I could not find it for a good long while. I gave up looking for it ages ago.
Today, my dad was digging through storage, and among the many things he found was my trusty old cabinet! I'm so happy to have it back now that I'm doing smaller tanks. It is far from elegant (it uses an eyehook for a latch), but it was the first thing I built from scratch on my own, with no plans or help whatsoever.